Irena Hayter

Bio

Irena Hayter is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Leeds. Her research is situated at the intersection of Japanese literature, cinema and cultural history during the interwar years. She is the co-editor of Tenkō: Cultures of Political Conversion in Transwar Japan (Routledge). Her current monograph project, Subjects in Motion, is a media-historical investigation of urban spectacle, women and cinema in imperial Japan.

Contributions

Between Vernacular Modernism and Fascist Spectacle: On the Japanese Mannequin Girl

Peer Reviewed

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On July 31, 1937, the Japanese national newspaper Asahi carried a photograph of a group of stylishly dressed women facing the camera, smiling, caught in movement. What appear to be patriotic slogans are pinned like sashes across their bodies; some of the women carry donation boxes (Fig. 1). The image is accompanied by a short news item about fashion models performing “patriotic service” ( hōshi). “Beguiling” in their elegant Western outfits or Japanese kimono, around forty of these “mannequin...

Tags: japan fascism